ONE MORE CLUE

Hey everyone! Vacation was great, and I'm sorry I had to take another week to finish this. But ti's done now, and I'm in a hurry to get somewhere, so I will let you read now! Thanks to all who read and reviewed! :)

- Dis/Claimer –

x x x

. Chapter Seven .

On the way back to the Gates Manor, Abigail had insisted that Riley sit up front with her and Alex. Ben was going to offer to drive, but really, what would Riley possible do? Carolyn sided with Abigail on the suggestion, and Ben agreed, finding himself apologizing to Riley as he removed the handcuffs from him.

“What happened in the ambulance-“

“Please,” Riley said, rubbing his wrists as the handcuffs fell away, “spare me.”

Ben sighed. “Listen, I know I’ve screwed up and you’re not going to forgive me for it,” – he waited for Riley to interrupt but continued when he saw him listening impatiently – “but I still need your help. I don’t know what else we could come to face, but computer or no computer, the whole thing seems unbalanced without you.”

“Unbalanced?” Riley didn’t see how the word fit, so Ben searched for another.

“It wouldn’t… be the same?” he clarified sheepishly.

Riley felt like a rag doll; his body was flimsy and worn out, and his hard, immobile eyes stared right at Ben, their luster dulled. Ben could see it, but Riley could feel it. He could feel it dragging him down, ambushing the vestiges of his innocence that kept him in that naïve, sarcastic, boyish ambiance. He didn’t feel playful anymore, neither curious nor inquisitive.

Riley Poole suddenly had the feeling that he had just grown up.

He lowered his head as Ben’s line ran through his head again. It wouldn’t be the same. Reality reared its ugly head at Riley, and he realized he was probably more disappointed than Ben to finally acknowledge the fact as he walked away.

“Nothing is the same anymore, Ben.”

Now, sitting in the front seat of an armored bank truck (was there really need to put the word ‘stolen’ in front of anything anymore?), Riley’s conscious reprimanded him incessantly. It nagged at him to just make peace, because Ben wasn’t letting him and Carolyn go, and even though he had nowhere to really go except back to that stupid Ian Howe Estate of Ultimate Demise, he’d prefer to leave. Get away before he went and lost more brain cells hearing Ben dribble on mindlessly about history and treasure, before he died from some treasure hunting related danger or drama, before he simply wet insane from trying to rationalize everything so much and convince himself that all of it wasn’t happening.

As their twenty-five minute drive was drawing to a close, Abigail silently glanced at Riley for the umpteenth time. He wasn’t okay, and god only knew the dread she felt in playing a part in all this. Zoned out as he appeared, Abigail wondered how much it bothered him to see her in Carolyn’s wedding dress right beside him. Between them, Alex had fallen asleep, his head resting comfortably against Riley’s arm. He seemed unfazed as fire engine went whining by with their loud sirens.

Abigail took a flying a chance at a conversation she knew would be one-sided, desperate to see something remind her of her Riley. This one was so desolate and lonely, even hopeless. She didn’t want him to believe that.

“Riley?”

He stared ahead, wounded, his gaze fixated through the windshield.

“I just wanted you to know,” she said gently as two more fire trucks whizzed past, “that if you ever wanted or needed to come back to the manor and stay for a while, you’re always welcome to.”

Riley slowly sat up on the edge of the seat still looking through the window. “Thank you, Abigail, but I can’t.”

She rolled her eyes, missing his undertone of panic. “Listen, I will talk to Ben-“

“You better,” Riley half-laughed, face almost touching the windshield now. “About finding a new house.”

When Abigail looked ahead, another army of fire engines and emergency vehicles went speeding around their armored truck, heading for a great, strong, fiery inferno blazing high above a collection of trees. Her heart dropped as she slammed unforgivably hard on the brakes. She and Riley stared at the horrific sight, the sounds of the passengers in the back hitting off the metal wall between them.

Abigail’s hands slipped from the steering wheel, trying to deny the scene before her. She did not move whatsoever as Ben walked up to the window next to her. He in fact stared at his burning home as she did with confusion and a faint hope that it was all a mistake on his part. Everything, everything in that house… all the historical and personal treasures… claimed by fire and smoke as blacker than the night sky.

“Wh-? What happened?” Ben stammered, bringing his hand to his forehead. His refutation, accompanied with an increasing insatiable anger, sent him in disjointed circles while a group of police cars drove by. Finally, Ben gripped the edge of Abigail’s window to steady himself from the dizzying vista. He shut his eyes tight in the process of slimming down the causes of all this.

“Get out of the road.”

Riley looked over at him reflexively and then to Abigail. She had fallen back into the seat unable to tear her eyes from the towering flames. They danced on the surface of her glassy eyes mockingly.

“Abigail, we gotta move,” Riley said, shaking her arm as Ben met his eyes. The exchange was like instinct, requiring little thinking or memory of hatred. Riley didn’t like it.

“We’re going up the road here that overlooks the backyard and court,” Ben told him as Riley nodded stiffly. “Hurry, I’ve got to make a phone call.”

Riley made a rude face, mimicking Ben childishly as he walked away. “’Meh, I have to make a phone call.’” He grunted softly and folded his arms over his chest. “Who’s he calling? Ghostbusters? Mythbusters? The History Channel?” He got a look from Abigail to show she thought his rant unnecessary, and he glared at her out of the corner of his eye and said, “What?”

She smiled involuntarily. Her husband and Riley fought like siblings, but she chose not to tell him this lest she endure Riley’s griping of the subject and heighten the aggressiveness of the dispute. For now, Abigail kept quiet and released the break when she heard the heavy metal door close behind her, spinning gravel as she moved up the road with more police cars and made a turnoff.

At the crest of the hill, Abigail came to a smoother stop. Within seconds, everyone had left the vehicle in case by some miracle what they had seen on the road below was something different that what they were witnessing now. Riley was even stunned. That… that had been his home for the past seven years. Had his bad karma done this? As much as he could honestly say he had a passionate hatred toward Ben right now, he didn’t deserve to have his home engulfed in hot fire right in front of him. No one did.

Somehow he had wrapped an arm around Carolyn without knowing it, and Charlie was standing next to them solemnly with a handful of lollipops.

“Charlie, you and Sally should go back in the truck,” Riley told him gently. “Maybe go make sure your brother’s okay?”

“Why is the house on fire, Mom?” Charlie asked. “Will the firemen put it out so we can go back inside in the morning?”

Abigail knelt down to her eldest son. It was evident that she as trying not to look pained through her smile, but it wasn’t even getting past Charlie. She rubbed his arms quickly and said, “I don’t know, sweetie. Go back to the truck with your sister. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Riley stopped following their conversation when he looked to Ben who was anxiously pacing with his phone to his ear. Carolyn and Abigail also turned to him when he started speaking, a voice faintly heard on the other end.

“Hi, sorry I can’t talk now, but if you call my assistant at-“

“Trust me,” Ben said sharply as his greeting, “you have time to talk to me.”

A stagnant pause was followed by a jovial voice that sounded very out-of-place. Carolyn recognized it immediately as Maddox.

“Benjamin Gates! It is you, then?”

Ben was polite but biting in his tone. “Yes. I’d like to discuss a few things.”

“What a coincidence. I would like to as well, regarding several matters.”

“The first of which being why you’ve set fire to my house.” Riley never could understand how Ben could sound so cool, calm, and collected about things normal people would be in an uproar about, but the poise (at least at one point in time) was admirable. And oddly threatening without a trace of hostility.

Whittacre did not sound the least bit resentful. “My compass wasn’t there,” he said as if it were a perfectly acceptable means of justification while a knowing weight in Ben’s tuxedo jacket grew heavier. “Which leads us to our next topic of meeting in person so you can give it to me.”

“Ben, I don’t think you should,” Abigail beseeched quickly, glancing between him and their burning home. “It’s not worth it-“

“I have to,” he said, trying not to come off as irritated as he covered the receiver. “But we need his help. He doesn’t know there’s a second compass, and we’re at a standstill.”

Riley laughed. Ben had officially lost his mind. “Did you look over the hill?! He torched your house! And you still trust him?!”

“I don’t trust him at all,” Ben said haughtily. “Believe me, the contact is mutually unwanted.” Riley shook his head and looked away. Ben brought the phone back to his ears, shoving his hand into his pocket as he watched several thick streams of water blast into the stubborn fire.

“-ates? Gates, an-“

“We’d like to meet as soon as possible,” Ben told him immediately.

“Well that’s what I like to hear,” Maddox said encouragingly. “Unfortunately I can’t at the moment… How about Gettysburg the day after tomorrow? I trust you to keep my compass safe until then.”

Ben would’ve threatened to break the compass before then, but he knew, like Maddox and everyone else, that he wasn’t about to crush a clue to a possible treasure and end to the trivial Roanoke mystery. He was that predictable, and it made him angry not for the first time in his life. Regrettably, Maddox made him an offer he could not refuse.

“Gettysburg… Why the location?” he asked curiously.

“I’ll be in Ohio tomorrow and won’t make it back to Roanoke in time, otherwise I’d invite you right into my backyard,” Maddox said. “And despite being a history buff like you, I’ve never been there. Perhaps we can take a tour?”

“Yeah,” Ben complied blandly. “Sounds great.”

“Perfect. We’ll say around… noon? How about in Devil’s Den? I’ve always wanted to go trekking around down there.”

A portion of the roof fell from the house in the distance. Ben resisted grinding his teeth.

“I’ll be there.”

“I should hope so.”

With that, the line was dead, silent in Ben’s ear. He slapped the phone shut and brought his hand to his mouth, watching as his home and all of its history burn in the fiery display. Abigail was still crouching as she looked on powerlessly; she was very sure she’d fall over if she tried to stand. Riley saw the thin trace of tears brimming along her eyelids, starting to spill over and slide down her face. Carolyn was transfixed as well, her chest heaving her denial, but she was capable of speech.

Now what? was exactly what they were all thinking. Carolyn knew that.

“Let’s go to the Estate,” she said. Finally, her eyes left the fire and turned to Ben. “We can figure out the compass there.”

Ben swallowed painfully against the rage rising in his throat. “No. No, it could be a trap,” he said, trying to think as the black smoke began to blow towards them in the chill February wind.

“Or burning to the ground,” Riley muttered, part of him secretly hoping it was. Carolyn gave him a look, but not one of reprimand. One of realization. It very well might be, considering Maddox Whittacre had approached her in the estate’s home almost a week prior. That was where the compass had been, so he must have gone there, too.

“We can’t go there,” Ben said to the dirt and gravel.

“He’s right.” Abigail stood, now leading them back to the steel armored truck, pretending the home behind her was not hers. Riley quirked an eyebrow curiously.

“Could we drive by just to make sure?” Off Carolyn’s expression, he said, “I just want to make sure it’s okay.”

“Yeah, I bet,” she huffed doubtfully. Riley simply shrugged. At least he had pretended to care for half a moment. But that moment was gone now. Oh well. Guess they’d just have to find somewhere else to live. And if it wasn’t burning to the ground like the manor was at that moment, Riley considered accidently-on-purpose knocking over a candle in the library.

“We can’t,” Ben insisted, climbing into the front seat to drive now. “He probably expects us to go there.”

“And he could be waiting for us,” Abigail said.

“Either that or he knows we won’t turn up,” said Ben. “It doesn’t matter right now.”

Riley stopped in his tracks on the way to the back, staring at Ben sullenly. “It doesn’t matter? Your house is on fire!”

“Why do you always state the obvious?” Carolyn asked as she walked by.

“Because he has a tendency to overlook it.”

“Riley, please get in the truck so we can leave,” Ben said civilly. To this, Riley could only smile and take a step back, holding his arms out wide and enjoying the feeling of defiance.

“You can’t make me.”

Ben leaned out the window, trying to talk without pretense of words. “You’re right,” he said, almost knocking Riley backward at the unexpected statement. “I can’t make you get in the truck and continue to help me.”

“Y- That’s… that’s right,” Riley defended with a show of uncertain confidence. “You can’t. And you can’t make Carolyn, either.”

“I didn’t make Carolyn do anything,” Ben said, glancing beside him where she leaned against the truck. “She volunteered. You used to do that.”

“Yeah, back when I had nothing but an apartment and a Geo.”

“Well, you don’t have that Geo anymore. You don’t have a Lamborghini. You don’t have a home, just like me,” he said with a nod to the afar blaze. Riley’s face flared in light of the fact; he might not even have the Estate to go to now. Ben met his eye seriously, an underlay of despotism evident enough. “Just like me, in the morning, you’ll be hunted once again by the FBI for robbing a national bank and have nowhere to hide but on the road with us.”

Riley looked back at the house. His eyes narrowed and jaw set. People lied when they said that the truth hurts. It didn’t hurt Riley. It just screwed up his life beyond the point of no return, and as mad as he was, he wished things would go back to the way they were.

But that wasn’t likely to happen seeing as his fairy godmother was absent at the time. Right now, he was being held against his will by his once-best friend, Maddox Whittacre was after all of them (and soon, too, would be the FBI as Ben so considerately reminded him), and he really did have nowhere to go now except into that truck or a small thicket of thorn bushes.

But Ben was wrong about one thing.

“I’m not ‘just like you,’ Ben.”

The historian nodded slowly, seeing it as a fair argument.

“Well that’s true. Unlike me, you don’t have a say at the moment.” He did not falter when Riley glared at him. He couldn’t allow himself to. “Would you please get in the truck?”

Between the unremitting staring of Ben, Abigail, and Carolyn, and how undesirable diving into a thorn bush sounded even in comparison to handcuffs, Riley began to head for the back of the truck, much to Ben’s relief. He wasn’t about to let Riley out of his sight with Maddox burning buildings to the ground in search of them.

“Thank you.”

“Are you going to handcuff me?” Riley asked Carolyn as if the answer were already predetermined.

“Not if you behave,” she joked, heading back with him. Ben listened to their muffled conversation die out with the slam of the heavy steel rear door. He started the truck with one last look at the burning remains of his home and drove off without a word.

x x x

“Quincy! Be quiet!”

Out in the hall, Patrick listened as his golden retriever quieted for four seconds and resumed its barking as it ran downstairs. Patrick sighed. It was futile to keep that dog quiet at night anymore, and if he was being honest with himself, he hadn’t minded for the last two weeks. He hadn’t been able to sleep anyway.

He looked at the picture on his nightstand he had found a month or so before his wife’s passing of the two of them on opposite sides of their graduating son. There were better pictures where he didn’t look so bitter and her smile didn’t look so fake, but he had stared at it every night since the funeral until he would finally fall asleep, finding some new little detail every time.

Tonight though, Quincy was keeping him awake instead of depression with his infernal barking. Patrick groaned angrily and got out of bed, grabbing his robe as he came out of his bedroom.

Squirrels. This had to be about squirrels. It was the only thing the dog barked at besides chipmunks and the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator.

“Quincy, what is wrong with you?” Patrick asked, turning on the light as he came downstairs to see the energetic dog barking loudly at the front door. A squirrel-related scolding on his tongue vanished as a pronounced knock came at the door that was definitely not something of which a squirrel was capable. Patrick hurried to the door, petting the dog to calm him.

“Get back, boy. Come on.”

He turned on the porch light and opened the door, blinking in confusion as his son pushed past him and into the house with a group to follow.

“Hi, Dad. Did we wake you?” Ben continued into the dining room, obviously not caring for a reply. Patrick stared at him incredulously as his two eldest grandchildren wrapped themselves around his legs tightly and almost knocked him over. Abigail came in with Alex smiling sheepishly.

“I… No, I was already awake, but… what is this?” he asked, wondering why Abigail was the one in the wedding dress. Riley came in looking none too happy in his rumpled tuxedo. “Is this because I missed the wedding?”

“What wedding?” Riley murmured as he passed into the house with Carolyn. She gave Patrick an apologetic smile as well, leaving him to only assume exactly how Riley’s comment had been meant to be interpreted. He looked directly to Ben.

“What did you do now?”

Ben sat a bag on the table they were all gathering around, Charlie and Sally dumping their hoard of lollipops on one end and excitedly sorting them into flavor groups with Quincy happily reuniting with his favorite playmates. Riley slumped into a chair and swiped a lollipop for himself as they others unloaded. Patrick stood in the doorway utterly bewildered, still having no answers.

“Ben, what is all this? What are you-?”

Ben set the wooden box on the table and opened it, revealing the second compass and silencing his father’s demeaning questioning. Patrick looked on it with a frown of disapproval, but intrigue nonetheless. “Where did you get that? What is it?”

“It’s a compass,” Ben said, now pulling out Maddox’s and setting the two side by side.

“Well I can see that!” Patrick said. He pointed to the other one. “Why do you have two compasses? What is going on?”

“Well,” Riley said with sigh, “long story short: Maddox Whittacre gave her brother a compass that’s going to lead him to a lost Roanoke treasure, they didn’t give it back, Whittacre crashed the wedding and burned the manor, we broke into the bank because Ben’s impatient, and now he’s on about the two compasses being connected.”

Patrick looked around, concerned when none of them laugh or tell him it was a joke. He went back to Riley just to make sure, and the young man raised his eyebrows as verification.

“Oh, and your son shot me and kidnapped me so I could hack him into the bank system.”

Ben seemed not to be listening as he sat down and reexamined Maddox’s compass. Patrick was livid.

“You’re shooting people, now?!”

“I saved him,” Ben replied calmly, reading the riddle etched around the compass once more. “And we knew Whittacre would come run us out for the compass. I couldn’t wait for the bank. I had to get what Mom left me, and it happened to be this – The compass of Francis Drake.”

Great. His son had robbed a bank. No doubt the FBI would be over in a short while and he, Patrick, would unwillingly be roped into all this nonsense. Again. However, this really didn’t surprise him. It was almost accepted without thought. Ben should’ve had the compass in the first place (why would Emily leave him a compass and where did she get it?), and he’d tell any FBI agent that. Now, Maddox Whittacre’s involvement in this fairytale surprised him.

“You’re telling me that the Roanoke fellow burned down your house? The nice one on television finding the remains of the colony with his boat?”

“He makes him sound like Santa Claus,” Carolyn murmured in amusement to Riley. Riley looked between Patrick and Abigail as they made eye contact, murmuring back with his lollipop in the side of his mouth, “Yeah. Anti-Santa.”

“I don’t believe it,” Patrick said absolutely. “It had to be someone else.” But no one made any indication. The silence made Ben’s father slowly realize how real this situation was. He didn’t want to think of it since he, like Carolyn, had been looking forward to meeting the man as one historian to another, but his judgment was terribly askew.

“So it was… him?”

“Yes,” Abigail said heavily, holding to a chair. Her voice impacted Patrick unexpectedly, and his shoulders fell sympathetically when the tragedy came alive in that one word. She took a deep breath 

and said, “He wants this compass to help him find a treasure that is somehow associated with the Lost Colony of Roanoke. He gave it to Ian years ago to pay for funding for his Roanoke project.”

“But now we have this compass,” Ben said, lifting the second compass from the box carefully. “And if I’m right, these two are related, and neither Maddox nor I will find anything without each other’s help.”

Riley couldn’t help be feel that the last part was directed toward him.

“What makes you think Maddox needs your help?”

“He can’t find his treasure without his compass, now can he?”

“Hey, just… stop. Wait a minute,” Patrick said, flustered. “First things first. Are you staying the night?”

Ben couldn’t believe it. Of all the questions he could ask!

“My bed is a pile of ashes.”

“All right, I just wanted to know. Don’t act like that; you barged in here at 12:30 unannounced.”

“We’re meeting Maddox in Gettysburg the day after tomorrow to discuss the compasses and see if we can’t reach some sort of deal,” Ben told him. “We’ll be gone after that. You’re coming with us.”

Patrick threw his arms to the side. “As if I didn’t see that coming.”

“Isn’t he getting good at that?” Riley asked him from across the table. Patrick just stared at him to which Riley took some offense. “Hey, at least he didn’t handcuff and kidnap you.”

“I’m his father. I wouldn’t be dumb enough to let him.”

“Oh, you mean like when we tied you up in the chair?”

Ben gave Riley a warning look. “Keep the sucker in your mouth.”

When Ben looked back down, Riley crunched the little green lollipop in one, noisy bite. Ben cringed while Riley chewed with a smug grin. Patrick cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“You’re becoming your mother.”

“No,” his son replied distractedly with his eyes glued to his inherited compass, “not yet…” He looked on the face of the aged compass with scrutinizing eyes. Little words were written under the dirty glass between the cardinal directions. He sat up in his chair. “Look, come look at this.”

The attention of the group gathered around Ben as it typically did when he uttered those words, as if it were some magical secret power or, god forbid, code word. Riley instinctively craned his neck to see and scooted his chair a little closer, hoping he would spontaneously combust from overexposure to codes and mysteries and treasures and history. Ben had made him dislike codes now. It had come to this.

Regardless of how annoyed Riley was feeling, he was still captivated by the discovery. Charlie and Sally ran around to see as well, poking up on either side of their father.

“What is it?”

“It’s a compass for when you get lost,” Sally said.

Charlie shook Ben’s arm. “Are we lost, Dad? Huh?”

“We might as well be,” Ben said under his breath as everyone gathered around him. He held out the compass so all eyes could see it. Riley was somehow pushed right up next to Charlie now with Carolyn and Alex leaning over him. He felt like he was coming off as overeager.

“Gather round the campfire, y’all,” he droned sarcastically.

“Stop it,” Carolyn said. She felt Alex grow heavy in her arms but decided she could hold him up long enough to hear what was going on. “Ben? What’re you trying to show us?”

“This.” His finger circled the edge of the compass’s face to indicate where he wanted them to look. “In between the cardinal letters. There’s writing, but I can’t read it through the glass. It’s dirty underneath.”

“Pop it out.” Abigail took it from him gently without acknowledging his babbles of protest and fixed her fingernail in between the glass and wood. With little effort, the glass lifted free in a few wiggles. Ben and Patrick never looked more like father and son than when they shared the same big, shocked eyes and agape mouth. She handed both pieces back to her husband. “The adhesive was dry-rotted. It’s four hundred years old.”

“Still!” Patrick said indignantly. Ben held his tongue, lamenting the condition the compass was now in but knowing it was required for him to properly analyze what he knew to be writing.

“Another message,” he said, looking for the beginning of the phrase with a nod to Maddox’s compass. “Just like on this one.”

“You know, maybe it was just a fad,” Riley tried. “Maybe it was cool to write poetry on your compass four hundred years ago and think nothing of it.”

“Then why does it have a similar style of letter carved in the back?” Ben showed the bottom of his compass to Riley, revealing a large ‘E’ on its wooden underbelly. To emphasize his point, Ben took Maddox’s compass and turned it over on the table to remind Riley what the ‘N’ looked like. Indeed the ‘E’ and ‘N’ were alike.

Riley looked at Ben hesitantly.

“Maybe carving giant letters on your compass was a fad, too?”

Ben’s shoulders fell. “No.”

“It spells ‘ne,’” Charlie said proudly.

“Nuh uh!” Sally said. “It spells ‘en!’ You did it backwards!”

“It doesn’t spell anything,” Abigail told them. “They represent directions.”

“And the ‘E,’” Carolyn said quickly at this, reaching out to touch it. “It means East. ‘Twilight’s air.’”

“Yes,” Ben said, glancing at Riley. “Twilight. The sun rises in the East. Compass E. The East Compass.”

“Meh, the East Compass,” Riley mocked.

“What now?” Patrick asked.

“The riddle on this compass made references to the direction of East,” Ben said, handing the North compass to his father so he could read the riddle around it himself. “We think there are two more, but we wouldn’t know where to find them. This one was in the bank because of Mom, and the riddle gave no indication of a definite location.”

Patrick read the first riddle pensively. He saw the East references, but as Ben said, no true location. He nodded to the compass in Ben’s hands. “Maybe there’s a clue to the next one’s location in that one,” he suggested. “I mean, if they really are related, which they look it.”

“Looks can be deceiving…” Riley reminded in a sing-song voice.

“You’re just being uncompromisable,” Patrick said, pointing to Riley. “You’re causing trouble.” He snorted in response.

“Uh, yeah! I’m being held against my will!”

“Please,” Abigail interjected firmly, “save it for just five minutes. Okay?”

“No!” Riley said as Carolyn grew tired of his persistent flouting behind him. “I am so sick of being told what to do by all of- mmph!” Before he knew it, Carolyn was kissing him to silence him. The twins made sounds of disgust for its duration. Carolyn ended it just as abruptly as she had started it and received an evil eye from Riley.

“Now, you’re being a tease.”

“Just read the writing already,” Abigail said exasperatedly.

Ben looked at the writing between the giant letters, starting with the line right after the ‘N,’ reading clockwise. “It says ‘O Greenleaf of destined fate, Against a blaze for moral state.’”

Abigail wrote it down immediately on a legal pad nearly identical to the one Ben had written the Declaration’s Ottendorf cipher on years ago. Having picked up a few things on breaking down and interpreting some riddles from Ben, her mind began to make connections. She circled ‘fate’ and ‘blaze.’

“Look,” she said, pointing to the same words on the compass. “Allusions to South. ‘Blaze.’ The element of fire is corresponded to that direction.”

“And ‘fate’ is also associated with it,” Ben explained to everyone, “like twilight is with East.” He reread the riddle on the yellow paper and compass a few more times to sink it into his head.

‘O Greenleaf of destined fate
Against a blaze for moral state.’

“Whatever or whoever Greenleaf is, it was involved in a fight. Or a war,” Ben said. “Fight for morals. What they believed to be right in their eyes.”

“Here.”

Riley jumped as Carolyn sat his laptop in front of him, looking up at her.

“Where’re the kids?”

Ben finally realized that Charlie and Sally were missing from either side of him, probing Carolyn with the same question in his eyes. She jerked her head towards the living room.

“I laid Alex on the couch. Charlie and Sally are watching television. They’ll be out soon.”

Satisfied with her answer, Ben and Abigail now looked to Riley as he connected his computer to the Internet without a word, saving himself the unwanted drama he knew arguing would induce.

“What am I looking up?”

“O Greenleaf and war,” Ben instructed, his father reading the riddle on the notepad with Abigail. Riley typed professionally and struck the Enter key, a moderate listing of information being listed that didn’t seem relevant at all.

“Half this stuff is about Lord of the Rings,” he said. “Legolas Greenleaf and the War of the One Ring.”

“That’s not right,” Carolyn said. Riley shrugged.

“Drake must have been a Tolkien fan.” He made a face, clicking the first link. “Here’s one on the Revolutionary War,” he said, all three people on his right leaning forward in earnest like the history nerds they were. He sat back to show them the webpage. “It’s a picture of an attendance roster. ‘An Alphabetical List of the Sons of Liberty who din’d at Liberty Free-‘”

“Tree,” Abigail corrected.

“’Liberty Tree,’” Riley repeated. “’Dorchester, August 14, 1769.’” He maximized the picture before he was asked, looking under the G section and rambling off all the Greenleafs (Greenleaves?) he saw. “Greenleaf, William… Greenleaf, John… Greenleaf, Oliver-“

“That one,” Patrick said certainly. “O. Greenleaf.”

“But what if that’s like a woeful ‘O?’” Riley said. “O, Greenleaf! Why hast thou forsaken me?”

“Oliver Greenleaf, like the paper says, was a member of the Sons of Liberty,” Patrick told them. “The Sons of Liberty were a group of rebels that harassed the British authority in the colonies, tarring tax collectors and throwing tea in Boston Harbor. They did it to show their anger and that they wanted to be heard as more than disgruntled English men.”

“Yes, they strongly fought for their beliefs in the Revolution,” Abigail said. Riley saw Ben getting that grin on his face again.

“’Against a blaze for moral state.’”

“What do the Sons of Liberty have to do with it?” Riley asked. “I thought this was about Roanoke?”

“Yeah,” Carolyn agreed, conveying confusion as well.

“I said when we first looked at Maddox’s compass that Roanoke was the first attempt to bring hoards of the Templar treasure to the New World,” Ben reminded them. “They may have gotten it here, but the location was compromised. Now the Masons, most of which doubled as Sons of Liberty, were hiding the Templar treasure, including this very first shipload.”

“I thought it was lost, though?” Carolyn ventured.

Ben shrugged. “Here’s where I’m a little skeptical since I’ve only heard it once or twice; the Sons of Liberty were rumored descendants of the Lost Colonists. I don’t think that’s accurate, though.”

“You will if you want to continue this,” Patrick said. “Besides, our family had a brush with the Sons. Frederick Gates, the father of Thomas. In his diary from when he was in the Maryland militia, he wrote about having a few drinks with these people. I believe a Greenleaf was mentioned.”

“Do you still have the diary?” Ben asked.

“Somewhere in the attic,” Patrick said. “I remember reading it when I was a teenager. I did a school project on it. Frederick was actually invited to a meeting by them, but the militia was moving and he was unable to stay despite expressing interest. It may have very well been this meeting,” he said with a nod to the roster on the computer screen. “Dorchester, New Jersey. Some of the Revolutionary heroes attended that meeting. Samuel Adams, John Adams, Paul Revere.”

“And Oliver Greenleaf, whoever he is,” Riley said, conducting another search for more information on the mysterious colonist from the riddle. He sighed despondently. “There’s nothing. Nothing on him. He was a nobody. Oh, wait, here’s a genealogy thing…”

“What does it say?” Carolyn asked as a page from a book appeared on the screen. Ben began to read it aloud where he saw ‘Oliver Greenleaf’ highlighted.

“’Oliver Greenleaf, born 1737. Youngest son of William. Educator of the town of Hancock’s Bridge, New Jersey. Fathered five children, including son Oliver who owned a book store on Washington Street in Boston.’ He was a schoolteacher, then.”

“Why are we supposed be looking up this man?” Abigail asked. “He seemed like a normal citizen wanting to serve his country. What does he have to do with Roanoke?”

“The Sons of Liberty – and I argued against this with my freshman Intro to History professor until I graduated – were the only ones to know what happened to the Lost Treasure from the colony. They had known its location since the mystery arose, and now that the Masons were hiding their own treasure, they had to keep doing the same,” Ben said. “Of course, I just assumed that since Masons and members of the Sons of Liberty were all for the same idea of freedom and had one common enemy in England that they just combined the treasures. What we found in New York.”

“I thought the same thing after you told me,” Patrick said. “That is was a bunch of malarkey.”

“Well if you thought they were put together, then your professor obviously thought otherwise,” Abigail said. “He thought the Sons were keeping the Lost Treasure from the Masons.”

“But why?” Riley asked.

“Yeah,” Carolyn said. “It doesn’t sound right.”

Patrick didn’t know what to say. “I could only guess why they wanted to keep their treasure a secret from the Masons, considering most of them were Masons,” he said. “Perhaps they knew all along what had happened to their ancestors and didn’t want anyone to know. Or maybe the secret was lost before this generation ever got the treasure passed into their hands. It’s difficult to say.”

“I need to see Frederick’s diary,” Ben said. “If it’s still in the attic.”

“Hasn’t been moved in years,” Patrick told him.

“Good. Riley, find everything you can about Oliver Greenleaf. Any family records, what he ate for breakfast-“

“Family records were kept in Boston in his son’s book store until the Civil War,” Riley said, having apparently already done more research on his own. “In 1866, the records were moved from Boston to Philadelphia, and again to the Borough of Allenhurst, New Jersey where they currently reside in a family-owned library.”

Carolyn met Ben’s eyes as she spoke to Riley. “Where’s Allenhurst?”

“Coastal town located on the easternmost part of the state,” Riley said, checking out a satellite view of the small town. “Population: 684. An ‘everybody knows everybody’ kind of town.” Ben didn’t 

look to happy to hear that, but Riley knew it would take a lot more than that to scare Ben away. “What’s the grand plan?”

“We have to go there,” Ben said. “As soon as possible.”

“You’re not going to bring Maddox, are you?” Carolyn asked. “We have to meet with him tomorrow, but we don’t have to tell him about this. We have to hoodwink him somehow and get there.”

“I don’t see how,” Ben said. “We’re going to have to.”

“Not if… not necessarily,” Riley then said, working something out in his head (though he wasn’t sure why because he had no desire whatsoever to participate). Abigail and Patrick were interested that he had spoken up, but Ben played it down, carrying on like this was just another scenario where their feud did not exist.

“What are you thinking?” he asked curiously.

Reluctant to tell, Riley was quiet a moment. Finally, the treasure hunting mindset that he had rubbed off Ben was allowed to be voiced. “You can still meet Maddox and stay one step ahead. There’s what? Eight of us? Half goes to Gettysburg to meet Maddox while the other half goes to Allenhurst to get the Greenleaf records,” he suggested softly. “We can plan it all out tomorrow while you read your great-grandfather to the ten power’s diary and see if you can’t get any more information on this guy.”

Ben nodded considerately to him. “Sounds like a plan.”

“I like having plans where my safety is involved,” Riley said, taking a stab at Ben. He brushed it aside and looked at everyone else still hung up on the fact that Riley had just willingly helped determine the next phase of their journey.

“We’ll decide who goes where tomorrow,” Ben said, rising from the chair and putting away the compasses as Riley looked back at the map on his computer. “I have to go meet Maddox no matter what, and Riley?”

“Huh?”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Shouldn’t I have a choice since I just gave you a wonderful idea?”

“Sure,” Ben said. “You can either ride backseat or shotgun.”

Riley rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. I thought we weren’t deciding until morning?”

“Um… you’re right… Ah!” He pointed at the clock on the wall. “Five til one. Good morning.”

Riley fell back into the wooden chair soundly.

“I am never going to get out of here…”

“What?” Carolyn asked, closing his computer for him.

“Nothing,” he sighed. “I just… wondered how far Allenhurst is from here.”

. Please Review .

Back                         Home                              National Treasure Main Page                          Next